The morning after: Neighbors saw a party bus and cars disgorge about 100 people into their home in Calgary for what turned into a rowdy party.
Photograph: Screengrab

Police found a trail of destruction, liquor and mayonnaise at a Calgary home rented out through Airbnb this weekend – after what the owners heard described as “a drug-induced orgy” at their home.

Mark and Star King rented their home through Airbnb to four people who said they were visiting for a wedding that weekend. On Friday, they handed the keys to one of those people; on Sunday their neighbors were texting them about a fight on the lawn and the apparent destruction of their home.

“The couch was completely broken, there was food product everywhere, the occupants had urinated everywhere, the table was smashed,” Sergeant Jim Leung of Calgary police told the Guardian. “In 27 years of policing I’ve never seen somebody take a home and trash it as badly as they did.”

The Kings told Canadianmedia that on Saturday night neighbors saw a party bus and cars pull up to their house, with about 100 people filing out of the vehicles and into their home. Video shows what the bacchanalia left behind: mayonnaise and barbecue sauce all over the walls, bits of furniture all over the home, puddles of alcohol, cigarette butts and broken glass.

Star King told CBC that walls were dented and toilets “flooded and plugged with condoms” and that she found “chicken meat in my shoes”.

“We came and wished the home was burnt down to ashes,” she said. “It would have felt way better.”

She said that she overheard police describe the situation as a “drug-induced orgy”.

Leung said “it’s probably one of the worst offenses of malicious property damage”, he has ever seen, and that police tentatively estimated damages “somewhere between $50-75,000, but it could be higher than that”.

He said that police first came to the house around midnight on Saturday, when officers in the vicinity heard sounds of a party. They asked the occupants – not knowing they were renters – to keep it down, and left without incident.

Neighbors called back at 5am on Sunday morning to complain that they heard “young people screaming and shouting from the deck area”, where police found people “creating a disturbance” that was quickly broken up.

‘In 27 years of policing I’ve never seen somebody take a home and thrash it as badly as they did,’ said Sergeant Jim Leung of Calgary police. Photograph: screengrab

About two hours later, they were called back because of a fight on the lawn, and neighbors contacted the Kings. Leung said it took “some time” to get the revelers to leave on Sunday morning, and that without the homeowners present, “the Calgary police had no offense to investigate at that point”.

Only when they entered the house did “they notice significant damage inside”, he said.

Asked whether police had collected names of the carousers, Leung said: “It was very chaotic and a lot of the occupants were asked to leave immediately.”

Police have begun a criminal investigation and intend to contact the person who rented the Sage Hill home from the Kings. “We know the identity for the person who rented the home,” Leung said.

“He may or may not be the person who took care and control of the home, or the person who just signed the property. We need to find out what his role was.”

An Airbnb spokesman, Jakob Kerr, said the renter was immediately banned from the service, and that the company was “working quickly to reimburse [the Kings] under our $1 Million Host Guarantee, which covers a host’s property in the rare event of damages”.

“We have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior and our team is working quickly to make this right,” Kerr said in a statement, adding that the company will offer its “full assistance to law enforcement in any investigation of this incident”.

Kerr stressed that such incidents were rare for Airbnb, which provides rental services to some 35 million people and offers services around the world. The company tries to prevent abuses by encouraging guests and hosts to vet each other; only allowing reviews of guests and hosts who have actually stayed with one another; and by employing a “trust and safety team”.

The company has tried to forestall such incidents after struggling with several high-profile horror stories in its young history. Last year a New York host experienced a similar ransacking of her apartment, and Airbnb said it would work to reimburse her for damages. In 2012, Swedish police raided a Stockholm home that had been converted into a brothel by renters.

In 2011 an Oakland host found his belongings stolen and meth pipes strewn around his home, and a San Francisco woman found her home despoiled – evidence of theft and fire, her clothing soiled, furniture broken and personal documents photocopied, and a “death smell” suffused throughout.